Cairo, Egypt.

Trying To Find The Tallisman Hotel. Cairo.

The Iman with his call to prayer, woke us for our first day in Egypt, at 4.50 am. Then you could also here all the other Mosques starting there calls. But I must say that this fella did have the most truly, wonderful voice. Over the next weeks we were to hear many more calls to prayer, but this Down Town Cairo, was the best of them all
Wendy and I thought that we would take an early morning walk, and see if we could find another Hotel
It was a Sunday so we assumed that it would be a quiet day.
This does happen sometimes in Cairo.

We wondered around our part of Down Town Cairo, and saw the Egyptian Television Network Building. We were amused to see, Police stationed outside, and standing behind a steel shield protecting him from what ever. Maybe it was the Cairo traffic and its noise.
We were walking along the edge of the Nile when suddenly we heard these dogs growling and carrying on.
We noticed that there was this fella, on the other side of the road and he was surrounded by about 6 dogs. These dogs were darting in at him and back when he kicked out at them. Initially I thought that they were training the dogs, but only for second. Then two cars pulled up and the drivers jumped and ran up to this poor fella’s rescue, and scared the dogs away.
It gave Wendy quite a fright to see this poor fellow being attacked by a half a dozen of Egyptian mongrel dogs.They do have a great problem here in Egypt with stray dogs. In Egypt recently they undertook a mass genocide of dogs because the stray dogs were growing too rapidly. In Cairo it was just awful, it got so bad authorities went around gunning the dogs down and heaping the corpses in a pile. This may not sound very nice at all, but what choice do they have in these third world countries.
Then, on the other hand,you cant help feeling sorry for them, esp. when you think of our little Jeb. back home waiting for us to return, and give him an affectionate pat.Wandering along we see the mighty Nile River. The thought of seeing this great river, its history etc, is so exciting. Then there it is right in front of you.

After making a few inquiries at Hotels we felt were too expensive for us, Wendy asks this woman that walks passed us, if she new of any other affordable hotels, in this area, of Down Town Cairo.

Within the next minute, she had us in a taxi and we were on our way to the Tallisman Hotel. She told us that on getting to this hotel, we were to ask for Mary, and that the taxi would cost us 15 Egyptian pounds. ($3.00)
Well this was not going to be a 5 minute trip, as our driver kept stopping and talking to people, for it appeared to us for directions. ( Like most of the taxi drivers in Sydney do, and also like the Sydney drivers not in English)
Eventually he pulls up and says that the Hotel is just around the corner and wants his money.
So, I ask him to show us the hotel, which he doesn’t want to, as he also, knows this is not the Tallisman Hotel.
Even the staff at the reception don’t know the Tallisman Hotel.
Off we go again, and our driver eventually speaks to some-one who speaks English. We interrupted, and ask her to tell the driver to take us back to where he picked us up.
Hurray!!.
Returning to the original point we get out of the taxi, and give the driver 20 EP. as the fare was only supposed to be 15 EP, but he doesn’t even offer us any change.
I asked for change, and he passes me 1 EP. so I asked again, and he offers 1 more, so we threw the 1 EU. back at him and took the 20 EU. note from his hand and we left.
He didn’t even have the decency, to say goodbye, or to ask for his fare money, or the worst, even to wave to us as he left.
I might have been wrong, but I was prepared to pay him the fare, even though he didn’t take us to the place we wanted to go to. However I didn’t like the fact that he wasn’t going to give us any or the correct change. And he knew, he was wrong as he didn’t try to get any fare at all from us.

Pity we never found The Tallisman Hotel.
Especilly when you compare it with the one we were staying at.
But if we had found it, our stay and experiences in Cairo would have been very different.
Karma

Lesson 2. Taxi Drivers, believe it or not, are not a luxury here,they are a necessity, in the Middle East.